![]() The water district has also launched a TV campaign. ![]() A billboard truck patrols the streets declaring a drought emergency in giant fire-engine-red letters. Residents are asked to estimate their water use, and then the water district looks up their actual consumption and compares it with that of other houses of similar size.īillboards show a rising blue thermometer of water savings to date. The district also sets up a Guess Your Gallons booth outside coffee shops, at parades and at other events. Winners are honored at the water district’s meeting and receive a glass plaque along with a sign to put in their yard. They have started a Water Hero award for the top water-saving customers. They have also held informal “living room dialogues” with customers in Coto de Caza. Officials with the water agency have spent weekends knocking on 2,000 doors and speaking directly with homeowners. It has no groundwater and no local water source of its own. The district, which provides water to 155,000 customers in Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Coto de Caza, Las Flores, Ladera Ranch and Talega, imports all its drinking water from the Colorado River more than 300 miles away. ![]() In the Santa Margarita district, they already know their June saving rate – 28 percent – though the state won’t release figures for another month. “We’re trying everything we can to keep this issue in front of customers, and we think they’re responding well.” “Face to face is the most effective,” Volzke said. That message is even stronger in Santa Margarita, where the district did not use any rate increases, fines or penalties against water wasters, he said. The savings prove that Californians can conserve water when pressed and when they understand what is at stake, said Jonathan Volzke, district spokesman. The agency also offers rebates for ripping up grass and installing low-flow toilets, more efficient washing machines and drip irrigation systems, and it has put aside $30 million for capital improvements with the goal of increasing the use of recycled water to 30 percent from 17 percent. The agency achieved it by, among other things, holding small meetings in people’s homes, knocking on 2,000 doors, plastering neighborhoods with save-water billboards, conspicuously honoring its most frugal citizens and rushing to get an innovative runoff recycling system up and running earlier than planned. The Santa Margarita Water District cut its water use 18 percent in May, compared with 3 percent in the previous 11 months, state officials announced last week. ![]() RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA – With billboards and TV commercials, living room visits, guess-your-water-use booths and awards for water stinginess, a swath of the county that once had one of the state’s worst records for water conservation is turning things around, proving it’s possible to get people to change their ways. ![]()
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